「Announcements Expanding」 — Anthropic expands Cyber Verification Program with three access tiers

Anthropic announced the expanded Cyber Verification Program on October 6, 2026, combining Project Glasswing with its earlier program to let more security organizations apply for advanced cyber capabilities with reduced blocking classifiers. The program has three tiers—Defense Access, Red Team Access, and Specialized Access—with distinct verification requirements and security controls. Each tier includes Claude Opus 5.5, Claude Sonnet 5.5, Claude Mythos 5.1, and new models moving forward.

Defense Access is intended for defensive work such as security operations and incident response, malware reverse-engineering, and vulnerability analysis and validation. Red Team Access adds authorized penetration testing and red-teaming. Specialized Access, which has the fewest cyber blocks, is reserved for a limited set of verified organizations authorized to test safety-critical systems or infrastructure. Anthropic aims to respond to Defense Access applications within a few days; Red Team Access reviews may take a few weeks, with qualifying applicants placed in Defense Access while their review is underway.

Anthropic reported results from its CyScenarioBench evaluation of the tiered safeguards. In Defense Access, 46 of 50 trials were blocked at some point in the challenge. In Red Team Access, no blocks occurred, and Claude Opus 5.5 completed 34 of 50 tasks. Those figures describe Anthropic’s evaluation, rather than guaranteeing outcomes across all real-world uses.

The expansion builds on Project Glasswing, which Anthropic introduced on April 7, 2026, as an initiative to secure critical software. Anthropic says Glasswing partners found at least 129,000 verified software vulnerabilities between April and July 2026, while its own open-source scanning found a further 5,500 between April and October. More than 33,000 of the reported vulnerabilities were rated critical or high severity. The figures give context for the program’s expanded reach, though Anthropic notes that partner data is incomplete.